Food Of The Massif Central
Don't expect anything very refined from the cuisine of the Auvergne and Massif Central : it is solid peasant fare as befits a poor and rugged region. The best-known dish is potee auvergnate , basically a kind of cabbage soup. It's easy to make and very nourishing. The ingredients - potatoes, pork or bacon, cabbage, beans, turnips - though added at different intervals, are all boiled up together. Another popular cabbage dish is chou farci , cabbage stuffed with pork and beef and cooked with bacon. Two potato dishes are very common - la truffade and l'aligot . For truffade , the potatoes are sliced and fried in lard, then fresh Cantal cheese is added; for an aligot , the potatoes are pureed and mixed with cheese. Less palatable for the squeamish, there's tripoux , usually a stuffing of either sheep's feet or calf's innards, cooked in a casing of stomach lining. Fricandeau , a kind of pork pate, is also wrapped in sheep's stomach. By way of dessert, clafoutis is a popular fruit tart in which the fruit is baked with a batter of flour and egg simply poured over it. The classical fruit ingredient is black cherries, though pears, blackcurrants or apples can also be used. The Auvergne and the Ardeche in the east produce some wines, though these are not of any great renown. Cheese is a different story. In addition to the four great cow's milk cheeses - St-Nectaire , Cantal, Fourme d'Ambert and Bleu d'Auvergne - this region also produces the prince of all cheeses, Roquefort , made from sheep's milk at the edge of the Causse du Larzac .
Your Tip for Massif Central
Help other backpackers! Write your own guides and backpacking tips to Massif Central - they will appear instantly on this page - Please only write a tip/guide to Massif Central - visit the main Massif Central forum to ask a question!
Please do not post links to your site here (they won't work) - please use the Massif Central webguide section below! Thanks.
| 
